Cursed Blood
by Sunshine170
Summary: He had never really comprehended what fatherhood was capable of doing to him. He had no idea until today that the love for his daughter which had once made his heart burst with happiness was also capable of turning him into a cold and vengeful monster.
1. Chapter 1

_I think I just understand transactional needs. Each party has something the other party wants._

He had said that to Olivia once, the other Olivia that is… he has to remind himself.

All his life he had known that statement to be true. Nobody did anything in the world without an expectation of reciprocity, of gaining something back. He certainly hadn't.

Unconditional love was a myth he didn't put much stock in. Not with anyone, not even with Olivia… because he knew there was always something that could and had come between them.

No, Peter didn't believe in unconditional love.

Until he knew his daughter that is.

The moment he had known of her existence, he had loved her. Before she was an actual person, before anything… fiercely, unequivocally and completely, he had loved her.

And when he knew her, when he first took her into his arms and saw her for who she was, absolutely perfect and his baby…in that order, he had only loved her more.

She had been a tiny little thing, her length almost entirely measurable by his single arm, and as she wriggled agitatedly in his arms, three minutes old and already impatient to get on with the rest of her life, he found himself awestruck by this perfect human being he had had a hand in creating, felt every pore of his being swell with an overwhelming emotion that couldn't be described as simply love.

It was stronger than anything he had ever experienced, a forceful almost ferocious instinct to protect her at all costs from everything and everyone.

He doesn't know if what he had felt for his daughter was unique in any way. Didn't know if all fathers felt that kind of blinding affection for their children.

He didn't know many fathers, he still doesn't. The one he knows best had broken universes for a child that wasn't even his...had risked the fate of two worlds for a mere facsimile of the son he lost.

So Peter didn't think it strange to feel that way he felt for his child, and if other parents weren't so completely in love with their children, then too bad for them…

They were really missing out, he couldn't help think.

* * *

Before Olivia, there was no room for a child in his life. He hadn't once considered the idea even when they'd been together, concepts such as family and parenthood falling way outside the scope of their surreal existence.

He could never have seen himself as a father.

But when Olivia had told him that day at the hospital that he was about to be one, he could never see himself again as anything but a father.

He had never really comprehended what that feeling was capable of doing to him, how it would make him strive every second to ensure his daughter's happiness above anything else, how the need to keep her from harm's way would become an obsession with him.

And how the loss of her would break him twice, make him inconsolable; devastate him with a pain which had no parallel.

He had no idea until today that the love for his daughter which had once made his heart burst with happiness was also capable of turning him into a cold and vengeful monster.

* * *

To know Etta was to love her, a Bishop family maxim, Walter had said jokingly several years ago.

At one time, Peter had known everything there was to know about her. Had memorized effortlessly every shade of blue her almond shaped eyes would acquire depending on the day, the sunlight and her moods, the exact softness of her blonde hair, the changing sizes of her little hands and legs as they grew over time, her growth recorded diligently by him on a giraffe height scale he had affixed to the kitchen wall, the particular sound of her laughter as it resounded all through the house all day.

In another life, he had known his daughter inside out, known that she liked her carrots mashed but not her peas. That she would eat toast but only with apricot jam and lots of butter. That she loved M&Ms almost as much as her mother, yellow ones included. She would eat apples, but wouldn't drink apple juice. That her favorite color was white and that her favorite book was the Burlap Bear. That she loved it when he played the piano for her and liked it less when he tried to sing for her. She liked Olivia to read to her in funny voices, and for him to tell her stories of all the places he had been to. Loved being hoisted onto his shoulders and taken around.

She loved playing in the water, loved it when they took her to the pool in the summers and loved running across the sprinklers.

She hated baths…

He didn't know anything about the young woman who found him so many years later. Doesn't know what she's done all these years in his absence, how she's grown up. He never took the time to get to know her, confident in the knowledge that there would be a chance for that later.

How wrong he had been about everything…

There was a time when he would be the one to soothe her every malady. The one who had held her comfortingly through every vaccination she's ever been given, as she buried her face in his chest, looking away from the sharp needle, but not crying or causing a fuss.

He remembers every bout of illness he had nursed her through, curled up in his arms in pajamas, where she liked it best, wrapped in her favorite blankie, the one that Astrid had made for her, as he rubbed soothing circles on her back through her coughing fits, applied cold compresses for her fevers, and tried to coax her to eat with bribes of mac and cheese and hide medicines in apple sauce, that he would make for her with Walter's special blueberry pancakes.

He remembers the time, she had gotten a bad nose bleed, and how he had become almost hysterical with worry, pulling out one Kleenex after the other, as he tried to stem the flow of blood, trying hard not to panic, to dwell on the ominous nature of such a happening, of the sinister memories it brought with it. His daughter's fate wouldn't be like his or Olivia's, he had promised himself. She wouldn't be made a sacrificial lamb to serve some bigger purpose, wouldn't be taken collateral for the greater good like his son.

He remembers every scrapped knee, scab and scratch that he had bandaged and kissed to make better as she bravely fought tears at the sting of antiseptic that he would dab gently on her wounds, cleaning away the faintest traces of her blood… because even with all the violence he had been party to, the sight of her blood, even the slightest bit of it, made him anxious and nauseated.

Today he lets her bleed to her death as the light in her eyes fades away, a coldness setting into them, a shade of blue he has never seen before.

Today he holds her lifeless form in his arms and weeps, grasping at her still warm body, and desperately trying to will it back to life, trying to find the strength to get her out of there.

Today he watches her body be blown up into smithereens from afar, doing nothing to stop it, thinking oddly in that moment of the countless Fringe crime scenes with scattered and bloody and mangled human remains that he had always been so disgusted by.

He forces himself to watch, immobile, powerless to look away, reminding himself again and again that this was the fate he had forsaken his daughter to.

That this was how much of a failure he was as a father.

* * *

He stares into the mirror; his shirt stripped, trying to look for that gaping hole in his chest where his heart had once been. It wasn't a visible puncture, like the bloody one in Etta's chest he had so futilely tried to fix, but it was there and it was rapidly swallowing up every good feeling inside him like a vortex

He resists the violent urge to gouge his eyes out, knowing he'll never be able to see his reflection again without seeing her eyes. He does not want to see traces of her anywhere in him. Does not want to be reminded of the fact that he had passed on much more than his cursed blood to her, wants to purge all of him that had made half of her.

He is disgusted with himself, by what he has let happen. She had died in vain, in the foolish belief that somehow his life was more important than hers.

He would laugh if he could, because he can't think of anyone less worthy of such a sacrifice.

He almost hates her, for forcing him to leave her side when he would have gladly stayed and let himself be obliterated into nothingness. There was nothing left for him in this world anyway. The only reason he had even left was because he knew Olivia wouldn't go without him and he really doesn't want to be responsible for another death.

He hates his father a little too, for not trying to do something, anything to bring her back, for accepting her demise as a finality after all those times he had defied death, treated it as trivial and relative.

And more than anything he hates Olivia. Hates her for having done this to him, for everything that had happened to him because of her.

He hates her for coming into his life that day, all those years ago in Baghdad for letting him believe he was a better man than he really was, for having the audacity and dismal judgment to fall in love with him, allowing him to think he was actually capable of loving her back without hurting her, for refusing to let him go even after the universe had so clearly understood his potential for destruction and eliminated him for the non-necessity that he was.

He hates Olivia for have wanted to seek happiness with him, for wanting a family with him, for entrusting him with the responsibility of fatherhood and giving him their daughter, when she who knew him better than anybody should have recognized the truth about him.

That he was simply incapable and unworthy of holding onto anything so good and pure.

She had a pathological need to see the best in everybody and he had let himself be pulled into her grand delusion, refusing to confront the inevitable truth, that in the end he would always fail, always let down anybody foolish enough to place their trust in him.

Suddenly he finds himself wishing John Scott had never died so that Olivia could have found her happily ever after with him, or maybe Lucas or Lincoln or really any other man on this godforsaken earth who wasn't him, someone who probably would have kept her happy like he had never been able to.

He wishes that he had left Boston like he'd threatened to the first time in her office, when instead of ignoring his instincts to leave, he had stayed.

He wishes he had never tried to kiss her that night at Massive Dynamic after Jacksonville, that she hadn't tried to follow him to the other side and ask him to come back for her.

He wishes for many things, for a different turn of events, a chain reaction that would stop this day from happening.

Because if Etta had been anybody else's but his, had been spared the fate of his paternity she would have lived… he's certain of it.

His daughter had deserved a better father than him. His wife had deserved a better husband than him.

His family had deserved much better than him…

That there was only one thing he had ever been good at and that was running.

Tonight after years of never knowing it, the urge to run is stronger than ever.

This fight has stopped being his fight since the moment Etta took her last breath. He could care less if someone were to set this entire world ablaze right now.

He'd probably be the one handing that someone a match and then he'd watch everything burn down without the slightest bit of remorse.

He would end his life if only he could convince himself that he'll stay dead this time. That the woman who loved him for reasons he couldn't fathom would allow him to leave this miserable world without a fight.

But he has to leave, he thinks. He'll go anywhere but stay here, where his child's life had been extinguished in front of his eyes. His mind is already steps ahead of him, channeling the old Peter Bishop who always had ten different exit strategies planned out for any situation, each idea seemingly implausible than the one before it, each one infinitely better than the alternative of having to face what had happened.

He could use Walter's device and cross over, he thinks. Go back to where he had come from, before fate turned him into a changeling, a place holder for a son his mother had lost, a second best replacement for the man Olivia had loved and lost.

He didn't belong in this world. The signs were always in front of him and he had never bothered to see. Even being expunged from an entire timeline had not made him realize that truth.

No one will die for him again.

No more will the blood of his loved ones be spilt on his account.

But there will be blood. Rivulets of red that he will shed with pleasure when he finds that man, if one could even deign to call him human who had put a bullet in his little girl's chest and then left her to die.

He will kill every last one of them, as many as he can lay his hands on, as many as it takes for the pain to stop.

He will avenge her death at any cost, even if the price is his humanity, his soul.

It was shattered and no good to him anyway.

And when he has done that, when he has had his revenge, he will leave.

He hopes Olivia will understand when he does, will not stop him, will not try to weaken his resolve.

She doesn't need him. She never really did. Like everything else, it was a mirage that they had deceived themselves into thinking was true.

He still needs her though, but he's willing to do without as punishment even if it kills him inside till his dying day. A feeble atonement for his sins, for his hubris in thinking he was worthy of a second chance with his family.

This was what his fate had always been.

He'll run and never look back.


	2. Chapter 2

_…It's got a working fireplace in the bedroom._

_Nursery?_

_Nursery?_

_Nursery._

Even if she didn't have eidetic memory, she doesn't think she would ever forget the half crooked smile on his face that morning when she'd voiced something that had been on her mind for some time.

A baby…

She'd wanted a child so badly. Their child. She doesn't know if Peter ever thought about it before Etta. She guesses not. How could he really, their lives had never given them the chance.

But she'd thought of it many times. Since that first night they spent together after that case in Brooklyn, in the aftermath of the long hours of passion, as a calming bliss overtook her and she had lain in his embrace as he gave into sleep, thinking just how perfect her life was right then and how much better it was about to get.

Together, they would have everything Mrs. Merchant had shared with her husband and more, she had thought. A lifetime of memories with the person she loved the most, of the many happy experiences and joyful events that they would have in years to come.

They'd have children someday and soon, she was sure of it. Two little girls, one blond and one brunette, both with their father's eyes and she would love them both so much, and Peter would too.

He'd make such a wonderful father, she had thought with a smile on her face as she saw him sleep, his arms around her gentle but possessive.

And even when things didn't exactly pan out the way she had hoped they would, a year later when she was once again lying in his arms and he had her pulled impossibly close, pressed against his chest, his hold more possessive than before ( understandable given the events of the day), she couldn't help thinking the exact same thing.

There was never any doubt in her mind about how much he had wanted their baby, unexpected as her pregnancy was. She had seen the genuine joy in his eyes, the hope for the happiness that had eluded them for so long, that had almost been torn away from them but a few hours ago.

She hadn't let herself think of the fact that they had almost lost their child earlier without even knowing of her existence (it was a girl, she just knew). She wasn't going to dwell on that.

They were done losing each other and their chance at happiness.

This was the beginning of their lives together, of their family.

And months later, as she had held her baby for the first time with Peter by her side, her soul mate and her miracle child… fighting tears of happiness for once, she had believed it with every fiber of her being.

That every step she had taken in the last four years had been towards this, the momentous collision of their paths, the tumultuous intertwining of their lives. It was never about the end of the universes or the future of the worlds. It was for this moment.

This was the fait accompli destiny had in store for them all along.

Everyone who knew her was always keen to point out the stark resemblances between her and Etta. But she had only ever seen Peter, seen his mischievous blue eyes and the roundness of his cheeks on her cherubic face, his soft curls that had made her blond hair bounce in the sunlight, the faint traces of chestnut at the roots. She had seen in her daughter his vivacity and his charms, the promise of his razor sharp intellect and his penchant for trouble.

And she'd been glad for it. Loved her baby all the more for it. No mother would wish for her child, the haunting ghosts of her past, the burdens that she never seemed to shrug off, the self-destructive strive to make every problem her own at great personal cost.

Her favorite memories of Etta have always been those of her with Peter.

She didn't think she could be any more in love with him. She discovered she was wrong when she saw him with her; saw how capable he was of affection and tenderness.

Rainy Sunday mornings the three of them would snuggle in their bed together, as she would try to playfully fight Etta for her favorite spot , curled up against her daddy's chest, a position fiercely guarded by their daughter. She would then settle for her head against Peter's shoulder (on rare days, when Etta was feeling particularly benevolent, mommy was allowed to share though) and they would watch cartoons, while the raindrops fall on the window panes quietly.

* * *

_"What?" She had asked him once as he looked at her with an odd expression, while she was curled up next to him on the couch as he rocked their week old baby gently in his arms.  
"Nothing, I bet you never thought you'd end up raising a child with the guy who once stuck electrodes to your chest and helped you into a rusty tank of water while you were high on acid." _

_"I've done stranger things." She had shrugged, a smile playing on her lips, as she looked at her sleeping daughter, looking absolutely tiny in his large arms._

_"Ok, but gun to head… four years ago, you'd have never trusted me with a kid right?"_

_"There's no one I would trust more."_

* * *

"_It's my birthday today daddy. You have to do ever__ything I say."_

_"Like he doesn't do that every other day." She had almost snorted, giving her husband a meaningful look. _

_"Kiss Mommy."_

_"Good, Your Highness?"_

One month and five days later, they lose her for the first time.

And twenty one years later, they lose her again.

* * *

Her first thought as Etta takes her last breath is of Peter.

She doesn't think of her dead daughter. She can't allow herself to. Doesn't even see her. She only sees him, face rife with denial, brokenly saying the same thing.

_No, no, no…_

In hindsight she's grateful to Walter for being the cruel voice of reason, for forcing Peter to leave the building with them while she simply moves on autopilot.

The weak have it easy. They get to surrender to the loss, to be decimated by its power, to lose hold over their sense of reality.

They get to be selfish and angry and not worry about the world's fate while they spiral into their cocoons of pain.

She's never had that luxury.

She'll survive anything, such is her fate. Her destiny has been to live through every ounce of pain this world throws at her, to not succumb to the salvation that comes from being destroyed by grief. To always be ravaged by misery and then be still left standing to fight some more.

She'll survive this too…

Even if survival only meant getting through the ordeal of taking one breath after another and not much else…

But only if he was by her side.

If she lost him, then there's nothing left… and she can't lose him.

Not again, not ever.

Walter may have guessed at the truth when he echoed her fears earlier, but he has no idea, no one really does except her.

She knows better than anyone what he is capable of. The timeline may have been altered, but she knows all too well, his capacity for violence, his combative history, the true nature of his rage when it was unleashed, especially when the people he cared about were involved.

Today she had seen in him what she hasn't seen in many years, decades really. A glimmer of that cold and calculating conman, the one who could go to any lengths to get what he wanted.

But he's not driven by personal gain any longer, its grief…. raw and painful grief, and above all its vengeance.

She doesn't think such motivation is any better.

And it scares her so much, scares her to see that cloud of darkness over his head.

It could take him away from her again, to a place from which there was no returning.

And she can't have that at any cost.

There are many things this world has wrenched away from her, over and over again and she has somehow found it in herself to believe it was still worth saving.

Even if it's a world without her daughter. She'll do it for her sake, for her brave little girl, for every Etta out there whose mother won't have to watch her die in front of her if she can only have the strength to keep going.

But a world without Peter is one she can't save. She's lived in that world and it isn't worth anything at all.

Since she's been out of the amber, she's been skittish, slow almost glacial in reaching out to him, in assuming that place in his life, she had once held without question. But her daughter's death has made her realize she can't take time for granted any longer.

She watches the tape and remembers just how much she needs him. How much she's always needed him. And suddenly the urgency to be with him, to have him hold her in his arms and soothe her pain is overwhelming, almost involuntary, as she pulls out her phone, needing to hear his voice, wanting to tell him everything she has kept to herself for so long.

She won't build walls around her anymore. She won't shut him out and she won't be shut out.

She'll save him from the destruction of revenge, from losing the things that made him who he was.

She'll save him from himself and she'll save the world too.

For Etta…


	3. Chapter 3

He's not terribly gentle or precise as he cuts a slit at the back of his neck, his dexterity with organic matter far less impressive than those with mechanical. But he manages to make an acceptable incision, grimacing as he feels a trail of blood traverse glacially down his spine.

He hopes there isn't too much of it. He doesn't want to have to do any explaining to Walter or to Olivia.

Olivia… would she ever forgive him? He wonders, his gaze falling on the wedding ring hanging on the mirror.

It should have surprised him that he holds onto it the way he does given how little faith he had once held in the institution of marriage, that he protects it with such care, always wearing it close to his heart, where he can feel the heat of the silver against his skin.

But then again, he's always been sentimental that way.

Once it had signified a life of happiness, a sign of how far they'd come, of everything they'd weathered together, of the future they would share.

And even when they were falling apart, he'd thought of it as his totem, had known it would eventually find its way back to his finger, the day he found his daughter, the day he would be able to piece his family back together.

Now it only seeks to mock him.

Quite a fall…

Long before that unobtrusive piece of metal had become the promise of forever, he had made his vows to her, to take care of her and be by her side, to have her back, to live up to her trust… to never lose her.

He does… again and again. Over and over. This time will be no different he supposes.

Why she would love a man so flawed, so prone to repeating patterns, to making the same mistakes, the same lapses in judgment is beyond him, but he's always been glad for it.

He doesn't know God. Doesn't think he'll ever believe in one, especially not after yesterday. But the knowledge that he is loved by someone as pure and true as her, that he will always be loved by her no matter what; it makes him hope that there is redemption for him yet.

He knows there is no justification for his actions, for what he is so consciously about to bring upon himself.

There is no defense really except for maybe the weakest argument of them all, a feeble excuse that wouldn't hold against even the lightest of scrutiny, but the truth nonetheless.

He pleads insanity. He is put simply, a man unhinged.

It's not the insanity of rage, or of grief or even of the loss that had devastated him not so long ago.

It's the insanity that comes from loving something too much. It's the insanity that had taken hold of him since the day his daughter was born, to weigh one child against the fate of infinite worlds in a balance and know with startling certainty that he would always choose the former.

Such is the nature of his madness, his father's legacy to him.

He is Walter's son after all and the recipient of the sum total of his inheritance. The left-handedness, the crease on his forehead, the genius intellect, the hubris….the drive to flout the boundaries of impossible and the inviolate for someone he loved.

It's a madness he had always questioned in his father and yet embraces wholeheartedly himself now. He understands perfectly, why a man would go against all his better judgment, not see what was so evident… the shattering consequences of his actions.

Maybe that observer was right after all. He only sees what he wants to see. And he sees, he wishes he could unsee it, but he sees her blood on his hands, the light dying out in her eyes.

He sees the frightened look on his little girl's face in the middle of chaos and he sees the placid acceptance of her inevitable fate, as she urges him to leave her side.

He sees the antimatter obliterate everything in its range.

There's nothing left of her for him to even mourn her in dignity.

The only grave she will have is the one in his heart, the one he buries her in along with the memories of her three year old self. Her epitaph, he writes in his head, inscribes upon every cell of his body, into his very bones. That she was loved, that she will always be loved and remembered. That her death will be avenged…

He holds the tech, in his hands, contemplating the probe for but a second, trying to understand how something so inconspicuous could have taken what he loved so much from him, how it could have destroyed his family.

There is no hesitation as he moves it closer to his back, he's well past rational thought and he cannot be bothered to pretend accountability to this world.

The only person he's answerable to is Olivia and he doesn't expect her understanding because he knows he cannot hope for it. Not after today.

She was a rare being, his Olivia. Fierce and fragile at the same time and so much stronger than he'll ever be even with that miscreation inside him.

Unlike his, her heart knows no weakness, never loses sight of right from wrong even under the most extenuating of circumstances, and will surely find wrong with him when she discovers the truth.

He only wishes that when all this has passed, she will remember him by the little goodness that she had sparked in him and not despise him for how low he had fallen.

He's overcome by a most intense pain when he feels the probe latch into his skin and enter him. Feels like someone has reached into his brain and is pulling at wires randomly. For a moment he doesn't think he'll survive this invasion, clutching at his forehead, trying desperately to ride it out. He cannot die yet… there's too much to be done.

He grasps blindly at the mirror in front of him, attempting to find steady ground again, and then he straightens, feeling the pain subside slowly, breathing deeply as he surrenders to the sensation.

He hears the phone ring and answers it, knowing it couldn't be anyone but her, desperate to hear her voice as he still grapples with what's happening inside him.

His voice is a strangled whisper, the effort of speaking taking too much from him.

"Hi."

"Peter…." He cringes at her choked tone, the mixed relief, knows that she's been crying and that she's also perhaps smiling.

"Peter I want you to come home. I don't want to lose you."

He hears the quiet plea in her voice, realizes that she already knows something is wrong with him, senses the darkness that has invaded him.

With her, there are no bluffs, no deception he is capable of. She always could see right through him

She's hoping against hope that she's not too late.

How he wishes she weren't.

"It's okay, Olivia." He lies feebly, wanting more than anything in that moment to do what she's asking him to do. To go home to her, to bury his head in her lap and cry for everything he has lost, for everything that has been ripped from his hands. To have her hold him and soothe him, save him from himself.

"Etta would want us to be together, you know? She would want us to survive this."

Oh God… Etta. She would have never forgiven him for this. For becoming the very thing she had despised so much, what she had spent her entire life fighting against.

The evil that had caused her all that pain and suffering was now the evil that lived inside him.

"I just… I love you." He hears her say.

_You shouldn't_… he thinks to himself_. I am not worthy of it._

He's never been particularly good at saying that back. But this time, he doesn't hesitate. He wants her to know much she means to him

Who knows, if he'll even be left capable of love after this.

"I love you too." He says, before another fit of pain overcomes him. He feels like his insides have been jabbed with a sharp needle. The phone drops from his hand.

He breathes again and then he looks into the mirror, his eyes seemingly colder than before, his body more foreboding.

He feels transformed, weaponized.

He feels inhuman.

Perhaps he only sees what he wants to see.

Because he sees a man who has given up his soul.


	4. Chapter 4

The ghosts that walk with her are numerous.

John, Charlie, Etta….

Unseen to everyone's eyes, they're always there, behind her.

For years now she's led the wake of her dead everywhere she goes, of those she loved and then failed.

Today when she looks back, Peter walks among them.

The eight year old boy who held her hand in the field of white tulips, the devil may care conman whom she met in Iraq all those years ago, the partner she trusted above everyone else to watch her back, her lover, her best friend, the father of her child.

They all stand there in silent accusation, their eyes begging the same question.

How could she have let this happen?

Since time immemorial, she has waged a war for his soul with this world. Through lifetimes and universes she has brought him back.

It's what she does. She always brings him back.

But today when she sees his dead eyes, writing on the glass board with a singular focus, she knows she has lost.

She's failed. She's failed the one person who never asked to be saved, the one person who had always been the one to save her.

From her own loneliness, from her dispassionate existence and her mistrust of happiness, undeterred by the iron clad walls she had erected around herself, he had broken through without prodding or forcing, without once overstepping, knowing when to push and when to retreat.

Slowly and surely he had reached in and rescued her from the fortress of solitude she had locked herself away in.

Not once, but over and over again.

And she had failed him.

* * *

How many times?

_How many times?_ She screams in her mind, looking at the sky above her, her fury painting it a violent red.

_You can't have him. _She says_, _to whatever higher power or force that existed out there that was doing this to her, to him.

Why wasn't what they had enough? Why wasn't she ever enough? Her love never strong enough to ground him, to give him the happiness he so deserved, to keep him from steering towards that path of darkness that had beckoned him with a siren's call.

_ You can't have him. How many times will you try and take him away from me before you realize that I won't let him go. _

_I need him…_

It's not that Olivia can't live her life without Peter. She'll still breathe, she'll still walk this earth, she'll still exist.

She'll still fight against every last observer

She can do this without him. Survive. She always could. That was never really what this was about.

But she doesn't want to. She hasn't wanted to since he came into her life and made her believe she was destined for something more than a path of heroism that somebody else had charted for her.

That she wasn't alone in this world and he was there to fight her battles with her.

Whatever little normal she had experienced in her life, Peter had made it happen. By being there in every way a person could be there for another human being.

Years ago, she had traced the skin of his face with her fingertips in the early morning while he slept, wondering to herself what she could have possibly done to deserve him.

_Why are you still here with me? _ She had whispered to herself, terrified and elated at the same time.

"Because there's nowhere else I'd rather be." He had whispered back even though she hadn't been speaking to him really, his eyes still shut, as he pulled her closer.

* * *

_We're going to avenge Etta._

_Etta…_

The thought pricks at her already bleeding core. Without Peter, the grief hits her with a doubled intensity as does the regret, the regret of having been so skittish in reaching out to her, the regret of never taking the time to appreciate the remarkable woman she had become.

_"She's amazing, Peter. There's just so many things that I want to tell her and so many things that I want to ask her."_

_"You will. It's like living this beautiful dream... inside of a horrible nightmare."_

It had taken her less than a second to know her when she had seen her first. The chances of the young blond woman standing behind Peter nervously, looking at her with almost the same dazed look she probably wore herself, being the child that she had lost so many years ago were astronomically low, her brain told her.

But her heart had known, without heed to logic or probability or even common sense.

She had looked to Peter, for an answer that she already knew. Seen for the first time the absence of that defeated look his eyes had worn since Etta had gone missing.

_" Olivia I want you to meet Etta."_

_" Kiddo, come meet your mom."_

_"Hi momma…"_

She had stared in stunned silence as Etta had knelt in front of her, looking at her with that achingly familiar hopeful expression on her face. Had run her eyes greedily over every feature of her face, noting the changes.

The chubbiness of her cheeks, the baby fat had completely disappeared, uncovering the well-defined cheekbones and the features. The earlier softness had given way to clear delineated lines and sharp angles.

But the eyes….Peter's legacy had remained unchanged; looking at her like they always did, like they could stare into her soul.

Her daughter was beautiful, absolutely perfect, like she had known she would be from the day she was born.

She thinks about Etta and what she would have done if she had seen Peter today, seen what he has become.

Her baby would have looked to her with those bottomless blue eyes of hers, with implicit trust in them that she would fix this, because her mother wouldn't let anything happen to the people she loved.

The young woman she'd found years later would have fixed it herself. Probably would have knocked out her father with a heavy object and then gouged out that tech from the back of his neck with her bare hands if needed, Olivia thinks smiling humorlessly, almost certainly given him a sound tongue-lashing after.

She should have known…. She'd always known.

Since the day their daughter was born, she had recognized it… the all-consuming love of a father for his child, a firm resolution in Peter's eyes that burned with so much brightness, that Walter's past madness over his son almost paled in comparison.

She had always known deep down that when push came to shove, there was absolutely nothing Peter wouldn't do for her, no qualm, rational or moral that could stand in his way.

She should have known, because she knew him. Knew that underneath that man who had spent the better part of his life running away from people and shying away from putting down roots, was someone who craved family more than oxygen, who fiercely cared about the people who meant something to him.

Where she had been at odds about being a mother, he had embraced fatherhood with a zeal so fervent that at times it had made her feel all the more worse for feeling the way she did

Peter never loved easily. But when he did, it was without temperance, without any sense of ration or logic. And he had loved their daughter much like he had lived his life, recklessly passionately and contradictorily, with a delicateness that bordered on reverence and a protective instinct that was almost feral in his desire to keep her safe from the dangers of the world.

Predictably it had destroyed him when he couldn't and she had let it destroy him.

The intensity and extent of his feelings for their child had always been known to her. What hadn't occurred to her was what would happen when those feelings collided with the curse of intellectual hubris that ran in his blood, the desire to play god without heed to consequence.

She had seen the warning signs… had seen what the loss of Etta was doing to him and chosen to ignore it. Had accepted his weak explanations because she didn't want to believe something was wrong.

Because like always, she needed him to be the one who would hold her together. The one she could depend on and rely upon, if he was broken, then who would fix her?

And now history had repeated itself.

He had fallen and she hadn't been there to catch him.

He's the one who had committed original sin, reiterated the mistakes of his father, and yet she's the one who feels guilty.

There is a picture she keeps hidden in the inner pocket of her jacket. A picture of Peter and Etta, from a photo booth at a street fair they'd been to once. It's the only thing she had taken with her from their house the day she left for New York twenty one years ago.

She wasn't in the picture because she couldn't go that time. She was supposed to, but work had intervened. And because she couldn't bear to disappoint Etta she had told him to take her by himself.

"Did you have fun?" She had asked as he transferred a sleeping Etta into her arms later that night, who was still clutching a giant stuffed pony that was almost as big as her.

"_Oh yeah. I got you something."_ He had said holding out the photo for her.

She fishes out the picture from her pocket and looks at it, a smile inevitably forming on her lips as she sees the laughing faces of her husband and her two year old making funny expressions as they looked at the camera.

She thinks of his blank and glassy face today, devoid of any emotion or feeling.

_"So you can know we were thinking about you."_ He had whispered over the little girl's head, kissing her on the cheek, when he'd handed it to her.

She fingers the tidy writing on the back.

_For Liv _

_Who is the best at pretty much everything. Wish you were here with us._

_Peter & Etta _

She wishes too. She wishes she were there in that moment with them in the photo booth, instead of sitting around in a car doing reconnaissance for four hours.

Peter had given it to her in an effort to include her in the experience. But now when she sees the picture, she can only note her glaring absence.

She thinks of the photo and remembers all the time she wasn't there for Etta and Peter was. All the doctors' appointments and play dates she had missed because she couldn't tear herself from work. All the times, she had come home late to find her already put to bed by him and left early in the mornings before she would wake up.

Even though they both had the same jobs and were equally prone to be consumed by it, by some unspoken understanding, it was Peter who had always prioritized Etta when the inevitable conflict between work and life arose, Peter who would make up for her absences and take the backseat from crime fighting to attend to their little family.

She doesn't even remember the first week after Etta was born, having spent that time equally between breast feeding and sleeping and doing nothing else really, exhausted as she was. It was Peter who had held fort, changed diapers, taken care of their new baby and her too, kept her fed and hydrated and kept the house from resembling a trashed hotel room.

For the large part, it was Peter who had raised Etta while she had mostly stood on the sidelines, conflicted between her responsibilities towards her daughter and her need to right every wrong in the world.

Even after they found her so many years later, he had been the one who had whole heartedly embraced their daughter back into their lives, without a moment's hesitation.

Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, worn around the edges with time, but still in sync, they had fit together perfectly. Like they always had.

He had risked his life to get her a necklace because it meant something to her, while she was still struggling to have a conversation with her that lasted longer than a few minutes.

And maybe, Olivia thinks as she looks at the picture, maybe because he was such an exceptional father, he had done what he had done, had been so unwilling to let her go just like that, had paid the price of his soul to avenge her.

After all, she only thinks she knows the pain he's going through because it was her pain too. But maybe her grief didn't even equal a fraction of his. Maybe, if feelings could be summed up in quantitative measures, Peter had simply loved Etta far more than she had ever been capable of.

Because of who she was, and what she'd been prepared for.

If she had only known how to mourn her dead child, she would have mourned with him, shared his sense of loss and not let him spiral into his descent towards hell, wouldn't have let him be overtaken by his demons.

If she had loved their daughter like Peter had, with all her heart, without the reservations that had kept her from doing that, had actually been there for her like a parent should have been, then maybe she would have understood the true extent of his anguish. Would have helped him find her all those years ago, instead of giving up and running away to do what she always did.

When he had needed her the most, she had turned her back on her family and now it was too late.

Years ago, there had been an incident, a shootout where Peter was almost killed. A bullet had grazed his shoulder and it was sheer dumb luck, he had avoided any serious injuries.

_ "You could have been killed you know."_ She had scowled at him unhappily as they drove back home.

He had simply grinned, in a helpless, amused manner. _"Well good thing I didn't. I promised Etta, we'd go to the zoo this weekend. There'll be hell to pay if I died and couldn't take her." _

It had been an innocuous comment, but it had knocked the wind out of her. She had always been aware of course of the constant dangers their job involved, what hadn't occurred to her till that moment was how that impacted their daughter.

She didn't want to think of living in this world without him. It pained her physically to even picture it for a second.

But more than that, it was the thought of Etta losing him that made her blood run cold.

That night, she had done something she had never really done. She had prayed.

_If it has to be someone, let it be me,_ she had asked God. _Please keep him safe_, _my daughter needs her father. _

She had it backwards perhaps, she thinks now. It was Peter who had needed his daughter, more than he needed anything else, more than he needed her.

Etta's presence had made him whole in a way nothing ever had, and without her he was left incomplete, like a vital organ that had been wrenched away from his body.

And she couldn't make him whole again…

She looks to the ghosts of her past and sees a woman once happy and fulfilled, certain in the knowledge of the invincibility of the love she shared with him.

Tonight she joins the dead who haunt her dreams.

Because she has failed him and she has failed them.

But mostly she has failed herself.


	5. Chapter 5

Some love stories have blood on them….

There are those stories which don't run seamlessly to be recanted in moments of wistful nostalgia, but those which are fractured and disjointed, where hearts aren't brought together through narratives of candy floss tinted lightness, but are broken and bleed in pain and longing, where that which heals is also what hurts the most.

It's always in a theatre of violence that their life unfolds, moments of cruelty, urgency and distress that keep them moving forward, gives them momentum.

Peace is simply an interlude.

It's an act of violence that brings them together the first time, in childhood and as adults.

They find each other in a carnage of charred white tulips and years later again in a war ravaged desert.

Even without realizing the roles they'll come to play in each other's lives, they learn to trust each other, not over the innocence of childhood but over the loss of it, over the pain of abuse and betrayal.

The first time she kisses him, its right after she smashes a bottle through the head of her friend, or at least her friend from where she is.

She tells him she loves him precious moments before he walks towards a machine that spells the death of billions of lives.

And his….

Such is the nature of their journey, the tainted memories they make together. There are no halos, only shards of light that break through the darkness.

The most macabre twist of fate is that her daughter's keepsake of them is the bullet that once took her life. The one that Peter stashed away in the pocket of his coat, while he held her in his arms, shaking with relief, as she awoke dazed and confused.

She remembers the nights in which Peter woke up in a cold sweat, shuddering and calling out her name, desperation lacing his every moment till his eyes found her and he would hold onto her so tightly that sometimes she would struggle to breathe, and she could feel the panic emanating from every cell of his body as he relieved every second of the horror he had witnessed, his fingers trembling to find the scar tissue at the nape of her neck, rubbing it furiously to make sure it was in fact not bleeding.

"It's okay…." She would tell him in a soothing voice, as she held him in her embrace. "It's okay now."

They kept it but never looked at it. It simply stayed there in that jewelry box because it was too important to throw away. But it was never meant to be a trophy or a souvenir.

It was Etta who made it something more; Etta… whose desperation to be connected to them had made her turn to the one object that had once threatened her existence even before it was known.

If only she knew…. Maybe it was better that she never did.

It's not that blood makes her squeamish, that point long past since her early days with the FBI (and memories of bloody noses and screaming, frantic calls to 911, though she doesn't think about that if she can). On the list of freaky bodily fluids that she's encountered over the years, it barely registers.

It's just the overbearing familiarity of it all. No one should know so precisely what the blood of a loved one feels like, how it gets on your hands and stays there, staining pale skin with its sick, viscous quality, infusing your pores with its essence, when it gets under your nails and dries up.

Even after running hands under scalding hot water with industrial grade soap till there's no sensation left.

It lingers….

A rusty rich red, sharp, metallic in smell and taste.

Blood is good. It makes your body work, when it flows inside you that is…. It's supposed to stay inside.

It's what makes his heart beat, his pulse going, his body warm and alive, had given their child life. It's his blood that that had run through her daughter's veins before it ebbed out of her chest taking her life away.

It coats the bullet that Etta hands her.

It's _supposed _to stay inside.

But tonight it's okay that blood finds its way to her hands, as she clasps his outstretched palm, replacing the tech with Etta's bullet.

Tonight it trickles down the back of his neck slowly, bringing to full circle what he had set in motion not so long ago.

She sees the pain course through his face, the sheer agony of this mutilation he commits upon himself, and its hurts her too, but she wills herself to be strong, because for once this pain is good.

This pain is necessary.

Tonight, he collapses into herarms, tired, broken… devastated.

But it's not a fall of defeat but of victory, over that hubris that would have destroyed him, had threatened to take him away from her.

This is how they'll win in the end too….scathed, damaged and wounded… but valiant.

They'll save the world in silence…. Like they always have and then they'll find home together, in each other.

Maybe it'll be in life, maybe it'll be in death, but there will be absolution, and it will be found together.

He stays eerily still for a few moments in that awkward, uncomfortable embrace that neither of them would dare break just yet, face pressed against her neck, and she begins to worry about something having gone wrong, about damage from the two bouts of self-surgery his brain has undergone in a span of days.

But soon enough she feels it, a shudder travel down his spine and he begins to cry, finally allowing himself to feel the pain of Etta being gone without the thirst of vengeance to numb it anymore, without the strategist in him ruthlessly pursuing that singular goal of Windmark's death, actually grieving … for what they had lost, not once but twice.

It's been twenty one years in the coming, this unleashing of his sorrow and she feels him come apart in her arms from the force of it. There is nothing but silence, as he weeps into her neck, his body wracked with sobs that don't make a sound, tears slipping from his eyes and slipping onto her skin which she ignores much like the rain that falls around them, as she holds on with a death grip and rocks him… like he had once done for her.

"I love you…" She whispers.

There is nothing more to be said.

They're at peace now.


End file.
